Words in
Wartime

November 11,
2004

The war
on terror, like all wars, has claimed
language as one of its
casualties. As
a name for the ill-defined
enemy, it has given us the ugly and silly coinage
Islamofascism. What, pray tell, is that?

This label is used not only by
Rush Limbaugh and neoconservatives, but also by some pundits who usually
choose their words with care, such as Christopher Hitchens. Yet nobody
seems to have defined it. Its more a bit of invective than a useful
term of identification.

The Left has been using
fascism as a cussword since the days of Hitler and Mussolini. It
was already very old and weary by the time it was annexed to Islam.
But whats fascistic about al-Qaeda, unless fascist just
means a form of politics I dont like, which doesnt
take us very far toward understanding what it is?

After all, nobody calls himself
an Islamofascist. The original Fascists, led by Mussolini, called
themselves Fascists, just as Communists called themselves Communists.
The American Heritage Dictionary gives as its primary
definition of fascism a philosophy or system of government
that advocates or exercises a dictatorship of the extreme right, typically
through the merging of state and business leadership, together with an
ideology of belligerent nationalism.

Not very helpful. Its more
an expression of disapproval than a dispassionate and objective definition.
And it hardly applies to al-Qaeda, which doesnt seem to combine
state and business leadership. What grounds are there for
thinking al-Qaeda aspires to dictatorship? Its chief
announced goal  which we have little reason to doubt  is to
drive the U.S. Government out of the Middle East. You may reject both that
goal and the methods used to achieve it, but that doesnt make it
fascistic, unless youre using fascism as an all-purpose
synonym for nasty.

And what is the extreme
right? The Left generally stands for socialism, dictatorial or
democratic; but the term right-wing has no such single or
consistent meaning. Its applied, usually abusively, to various
political systems that cant be reconciled to each other.
Conservatives, neoconservatives, capital-F Fascists, monarchists,
constitutionalists, libertarians, and even anarchists are all called
right-wing, their only common denominator being their hostility to
socialism. Some socialists label even liberals right-wing.

Islamofascism seems
designed to produce semantic
frustration. It should be possible to understand al-Qaedas purpose
without approving its terrorist tactics. After all, any cause, however
noble, may be advanced, and also compromised, by inhuman methods. This
basic distinction seems oddly hard to grasp. The United States has a grim
record of bombing enemy cities and killing their civilian inhabitants, yet
few Americans seriously ask whether these grisly means were justified
by their alleged ends.

Even today, few Americans are
raising such questions about the war in progress in Iraq. How many
civilians have died in a war that is supposed to be bringing that country
democracy and other blessings? We arent getting reliable figures;
our government isnt publishing them. Estimates run as high as
100,000; defenders of the war call this a wild exaggeration, but would it
disturb them much if it were accurate? At what point  if any
 would they agree that the human price of defeating
Islamofascism is just too high? Cant we at least
have an official body count of the innocent noncombatants? Just an
estimate? If not, why not?

And this, I think, is the point of
this bogus label. Just as all political scandals are now awkwardly
suffixed -gate, as in Watergate, so all foreign enemies can
be equated with the World War II-era enemy by being plastered with
the suffix -fascism. This implies that they are absolute evil, to be
destroyed at any cost. Whatever it takes.

In the same spirit, all resistance
fighters are now called terrorists and all American troops
heroes. No heroism can be ascribed to the enemy forces,
even if, in their own minds, they are giving their lives to fight a foreign
invader  not to establish anything that can be called fascism.

In other words,
Islamofascism is nothing but an empty propaganda term. And
wartime propaganda is usually, if not always, crafted to produce hysteria,
the destruction of any sense of proportion. Such words, undefined and
unmeasured, are used by people more interested in making us lose our
heads than in keeping their own.

The rest of the world
hasnt picked up this word. Undistracted by our propaganda, it sees
clearly what the U.S. Government is doing in the Middle East.

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